I should be working

So the kids are both sleeping (!!!) and I should be working, but I feel like I still have some emotional detritus I need to sweep clean to clear my mind first.

I feel supremely lucky and blessed in so many ways – here I am working on a graduate degree while someone else mops my floors – I don’t have to worry about putting food on the table or clothes on my kids – and yes, they are the most vibrant, challenging, soul-crushing and spirit-lifting blessing ever. I’m feeling better about things with Gimli too.

I’m also grieving my mom’s canceled trip. I’ve been crying off and on since yesterday morning just thinking about how she should be here. There’s this ghostly presence with me at all times – her shadow, in the alternate history that parallels my current reality – another universe, one in which she DID come when we had planned, in which she’s here right now. I have to stop doing this – imagining what we’d be doing and saying if she were here right now because it’s kind of crazy-making – but I can’t seem to give it up. I guess in some way it actually brings me a little bit of comfort.

A friend of mine once said that we missionary kids are like snails, we carry “home” on our backs wherever we go (something we learned very young out of necessity), and by and large Tirana does feel like home to me now. But I’ve been missing my mom keenly ever since Oz was born last July, for some reason, and even more since we moved here.

All I do here (on this blog) is whine!!! How dull. Well, it’s a venting space, as it is for many in the IF trenches. I’ll try to write something more interesting next time.